THE HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL.
Upon the seventeenth of October, 1883, the centennial anniversary of the
Harvard Medical School, the new building upon the Back Bay was
dedicated. The fine, commodious structure is situated upon the corner of
Boylston and Exeter streets, and is at nearly equal distances from the
Massachusetts General Hospital, the City Hospital, the Boston Dispensary
and the Children's Hospital with their stores of clinical material,
available for the purposes of teaching. Close by, also, are the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the museums of the Society of
Natural History and of Fine Arts, and the Medical Library Association.
The building has a frontage of one hundred and twenty-two feet toward
the north on Boylston street, and of ninety feet toward the west on
Exeter street, and its corner position, together with the reservation
of a large open area on the east, will always insure good light and good
air.
The dedication exercises were divided into two parts, the opening
addresses being given in Huntington Hall, at the Institute of
Technology, and the remainder of the programme in the new building. Upon
the platform, in Huntington Hall, were seated President Eliot, of
Harvard University, the faculty of the Medical School, and numerous
invited guests. Upon the walls just back of the platform, against a
background of maroon-colored drapery, and directly over the head of the
original, hung a portrait of Professor Oliver Wendell Holmes. Beneath
this portrait was a fine marble bust of Professor Henry J. Bigelow, who
was seated beside Doctor Holmes.
President Eliot opened the exercises with the interesting address which
follows:
"We are met to celebrate the beginning of the second century of the
Medical School's existence, and the simultaneous completion of its new
building. It is a hundred years since John Warren, Benjamin Waterhouse
and Aaron Dexter were installed as professors of anatomy and surgery,
theory and practice, and _materia medica_ respectively, and without the
aid of collections or hospitals began to lecture in some small, rough
rooms in the basement of Harvard Hall, and in a part of little Holden
Chapel, at Cambridge. From that modest beginning the school has
gradually grown until it counts a staff of forty-seven teachers, ten
professors, six assistant professors, nine instructors, thirteen
clinical instructors, and nine assistants--working in the spacious and
well-equipped building, which we are shortly to inspect, and commanding
every means of instruction and research which laboratories, dispensaries
and hospitals can supply. Out of our present strength and abundance we
look back to the founding of the school and to its slow and painful
development. We bear in our hearts the three generations of teachers who
have served this school with disinterested diligence and zeal. We recall
their unrequited labors, their frequent anxieties and conflicts and
their unfulfilled hopes; we bring to mind the careful plantings and the
tardy harvests, reaped at last, but not by them that sowed. We meet,
indeed, to rejoice in present prosperity and fair prospects, but we
would first salute our predecessors and think with reverence and
gratitude of their toils and sacrifices, the best fruits of which our
generation has inherited.
"The medical faculty of to-day have strong grounds for satisfaction in
the present state of the school; for they have made great changes in its
general plan and policy, run serious risks, received hearty support from
the profession and the community, and now see their efforts crowned with
substantial success. By doubling the required period of study in each
year of the course, instituting an admission examination, strengthening
the examinations at the end of each year, and establishing a voluntary
fourth year of instruction, which clearly indicates that the real
standard of the faculty cannot be reached in three years, they have
taken step after step to increase their own labors, make the attainment
of the degree more difficult, and diminish the resort of students to the
school. They have deliberately sacrificed numbers in their determination
to improve the quality of the graduates of the school. At the same time
they have successfully carried out an improvement in medical education
which required large expenditures. This improvement is the partial
substitution, by every student, of personal practice in laboratories for
work upon books, and attendance at lectures. The North Grove street
building, erected in 1846-47, contained only one small laboratory for
students, that of anatomy. The new building contains a students'
laboratory for each of the five fundamental subjects--anatomy,
physiology, chemistry, histology and pathology--and that a large part of
the building is devoted to these working rooms. It was a grave question
whether the profession, the community and the young men who year by year
aspire to become physicians and surgeons would support the faculty in
making these improvements. The answer can now be recorded.
"The school has received by gift and bequest three hundred and twenty
thousand dollars in ten years; it has secured itself in the centre of
the city for many years to come by the timely purchase of a large piece
of land; it has paid about two hundred and twenty thousand dollars for a
spacious, durable and well-arranged building; it has increased its
annual expenditure for salaries of teachers from twenty thousand dollars
in 1871-72, to thirty-six thousand dollars in 1882-83; its receipts have
exceeded its expenses in every year since 1871-72, and its invested
funds now exceed those of 1871 by more than one hundred thousand
dollars. At the same time the school has become a centre of chemical,
physiological, histological and sanitary research, as well as a place
for thorough instruction; its students bring to the school a better
education than ever before; they work longer and harder while in the
school, and leave it prepared, so far as sound training can prepare them
to enter, not the over-crowded lower ranks of the profession, but the
higher, where there is always room.
"The faculty recognize that the generosity of the community and the
confidence of the students impose upon them reciprocal obligations. They
gladly acknowledge themselves bound to teach with candor and enthusiasm,
to observe and study with diligence that they may teach always better
and better, to illustrate before their students the pure scientific
spirit, and to hold all their attainments and discoveries at the
service of mankind. Certainly the medical faculty have good reason to
ask to-day for the felicitations of the profession and the public.
"Nevertheless, the governors, teachers, graduates and friends of this
school have no thought of resting contented with its present condition.
Instructed by its past, they have faith in its future. They hope they
know that the best fruits of their labors will be reaped by later
generations. The medical profession is fortunate among the learned
professions in that a fresh and boundless field of unimaginable
fertility spreads out before it. Its conquests to come are infinitely
greater than those already achieved. The great powers of chemistry and
physics, themselves all new, have only just now been effectively
employed in the service of medicine and surgery. The zooelogist,
entomologist, veterinarian and sanitarian have just begun to contribute
effectively to the progress of medicine.
"The great achievements of this century in medical science and the
healing art are all prophetic. Thus, the measurable deliverance of
mankind from small-pox is an earnest of deliverance from measles,
scarlatina, and typhoid fever. Within forty years anaesthetics and
antiseptics have quadrupled the chances of success in grave surgical
operations and have extended indefinitely the domain of warrantable
surgery; but in value far beyond all the actual benefits which have thus
far accrued to mankind from these discoveries is the clear prophecy they
utter of greater blessing to come. A medical school must needs be always
expecting new wonders.
"How is medical science to be advanced? First, by the devoted labors of
men, young and old, who give their lives to medical observations,
research and teaching; secondly, by the gradual aggregation in safe
hands of permanent endowments for the promotion of medical science and
of the sciences upon which medicine rests. Neither of these springs of
progress is to fail us here. Modern society produces the devoted student
of science as naturally and inevitably as mediaeval society produced the
monk. Enthusiastic devotion to unworldly ends has not diminished; it
only manifests itself in new directions. So, too, benevolence and public
spirit, when diverted by the teachings of both natural and political
science from many of the ancient forms of benevolent activity, have
simply found new and better modes of action.
"With thankfulness for the past, with reasonable satisfaction in the
present, and with joyful hope in the future, the medical faculty
celebrate this anniversary festival, welcoming their guests, thanking
their benefactors, and exchanging with their colleagues, their students,
and the governing boards mutual congratulations and good wishes as the
school sets bravely out upon its second century."
At the close of his address President Eliot turned to the large
audience, and said:
"I have now the pleasure of presenting to you our oldest professor and
our youngest; our man of science, and our man of letters; our teacher
and our friend, Doctor Holmes."
From the delightful and characteristic address of Doctor Holmes, we are
permitted to give the following extracts:
"We are in the habit of counting a generation as completed in thirty
years, but two lives cover a whole century by an easy act of memory. I,
who am now addressing you, distinctly remember the Boston practitioner
who walked among the dead after the battle of Bunker Hill, and pointed
out the body of Joseph Warren among the heaps of the slain. Look forward
a little while from that time to the period at which this medical school
was founded. Eight years had passed since John Jeffries was treading the
bloody turf on yonder hillside. The independence of the United States
had just been recognized by Great Britain. The lessons of the war were
fresh in the minds of those who had served as military surgeons. They
knew what anatomical knowledge means to the man called upon to deal with
every form of injury to every organ of the body. They knew what fever
and dysentery are in the camp, and what skill is needed by those who
have to treat the diseases more fatal than the conflicts of the
battlefield. They know also, and too well, how imperfectly taught were
most of those to whom the health of the whole community was
entrusted....
"And now I will ask you to take a stride of half a century, from the
year 1783 to the year 1833. Of this last date I can speak from my own
recollection. In April, 1833, I had been more than two years a medical
student attending the winter lectures of this school, and have therefore
a vivid recollection of the professors of that day. I will only briefly
characterize them by their various merits, not so much troubling myself
about what may have been their short-comings. The shadowy procession
moves almost visibly by me as I speak: John Collins Warren, a cool and
skilful operator, a man of unshaken nerves, of determined purpose, of
stern ambition, equipped with a fine library, but remarkable quite as
much for knowledge of the world as for erudition, and keeping a steady
eye on professional and social distinctions, which he attained and
transmitted.
"James Jackson, a man of serene and clear intelligence, well instructed,
not over book-fed, truthful to the centre, a candid listener to all
opinions; a man who forgot himself in his care for others and his love
for his profession; by common consent recognized as a model of the wise
and good physician. Jacob Bigelow, more learned, far more various in
gifts and acquirements than any of his colleagues; shrewd, inventive,
constructive, questioning, patient in forming opinions, steadfast in
maintaining them; a man of infinite good nature, of ready wit, of a keen
sense of humor, and a fine literary taste; one of the most accomplished
of American physicians; I do not recall the name of one who could be
considered his equal in all respects. Walter Channing, meant by nature
for a man of letters, like his brothers, William Ellery and Edward;
vivacious, full of anecdote, ready to make trial of new remedies, with
the open and receptive intelligence belonging to his name as a
birthright; esteemed in his specialty by those who called on him in
emergencies. The professor of chemistry of that day was pleasant in the
lecture room; rather nervous and excitable, I should say, and
judiciously self-conservative when an explosion was a part of the
programme."
Speaking of the new building, Doctor Holmes said:
"You will enter or look into more amphitheatres and lecture-rooms than
you might have thought were called for. But if you knew what it is to
lecture and be lectured to, in a room just emptied of its preceding
audience, you would be thankful that any arrangement should prevent
such an evil. The experimental physiologists tell us that a bird will
live under a bell glass until he has substituted a large amount of
carbonic acid for oxygen in the air of the bell glass. But if another
bird is taken from the open air and put in with the first, the new-comer
speedily dies. So when the class I was lecturing to, was sitting in an
atmosphere once breathed already, after I have seen head after head
gently declining, and one pair of eyes after another emptying themselves
of intelligence, I have said, inaudibly, with the considerate
self-restraint of Musidora's rural lover:
"'Sleep on, dear youth; this does not mean that you are indolent, or
that I am dull; it is the partial coma of commencing asphyxia.'
"You will see extensive apartments destined for the practical study of
chemistry and of physiology. But these branches are no longer studied as
of old, by merely listening to lectures. The student must himself
perform the analyses which he used to hear about. He must not be
poisoned at his work, and therefore he will require a spacious and
well-ventilated room to work in. You read but the other day of an
esteemed fellow-citizen who died from inhaling the vapors of a broken
demijohn of a corrosive acid. You will be glad to see that every
precaution is taken to insure the safety and health of our students.
"Physiology, as now studied, involves the use of much delicate and
complex machinery. You may remember the balance at which Sanctorius sat
at his meals, so that when he had taken in a certain number of ounces
the lightened table and more heavily weighted philosopher gently parted
company. You have heard, perhaps, of Pettenkofer's chamber, by means of
which all the living processes of a human body are made to declare the
total consumption and product during a given period. Food and fuel
supplied; work done. Never was the human body as a machine so
understood, never did it give such an account of itself, as it now does
in the legible handwriting of the cardiograph, the sphygmograph, the
myograph, and other self-registering contrivances, with all of which the
student of to-day is expected to be practically familiar.
... Among the various apartments destined to special uses one will be
sure to rivet your attention; namely, the Anthropotomic Laboratory,
known to plainer speech as the dissecting room. The most difficult work
of a medical school is the proper teaching of practical anatomy. The
pursuit of that vitally essential branch of professional knowledge has
always been in the face of numerous obstacles. Superstition has arrayed
all her hobgoblins against it. Popular prejudice has made the study
embarrassing and even dangerous to those engaged in it. The surgical
student was prohibited from obtaining the knowledge required in his
profession, and the surgeon was visited with crushing penalties for want
of that necessary knowledge. Nothing is easier than to excite the odium
of the ignorant against this branch of instruction and those who are
engaged in it. It is the duty and interest of all intelligent members of
the community to defend the anatomist and his place of labor against
such appeals to ignorant passion as will interfere with this part of
medical education, above all, against such inflammatory representations
as may be expected to lead to mid-day mobs or midnight incendiarism.
"The enlightened legislation of Massachusetts has long sanctioned the
practice of dissection, and provided means for supporting the needs of
anatomical instruction, which managed with decent privacy and
discretion, have served the beneficent purpose intended by the wise and
humane law-givers, without doing wrong to those natural sensibilities
which are always to be respected.
"During the long period in which I have been a professor of anatomy in
this medical school, I have had abundant opportunities of knowing the
zeal, the industry, the intelligence, the good order and propriety with
which this practical department has been carried on. The labors
superintended by the demonstrator and his assistants are in their nature
repulsive, and not free from risk of diseases, though in both these
respects modern chemistry has introduced great ameliorations. The
student is breathing an air which unused senses would find insufferable.
He has tasks to perform which the chambermaid and the stable-boy would
shrink from undertaking. We cannot wonder that the sensitive Rousseau
could not endure the atmosphere of the room in which he had began a
course of anatomical study. But we know that the great painters, Michael
Angelo, Leonardo and Raphael must have witnessed many careful
dissections; and what they endured for art our students can endure for
science and humanity.
"Among the large number of students who have worked in the department of
which I am speaking during my long term of service--nearly two thousand
are on the catalogue as students--there must have been some who were
thoughtless, careless, unmindful of the proprieties. Something must be
pardoned to the hardening effect of habit. Something must be forgiven to
the light-heartedness of youth, which shows itself in scenes that would
sadden and solemnize the unseasoned visitor. Even youthful womanhood has
been known to forget itself in the midst of solemn surroundings. I well
remember the complaint of Willis, a lover of the gentle sex, and not
likely to have told a lie against a charming young person; I quote from
my rusty memory, but I believe correctly:
She trifled! ay, that angel maid,
She trifled where the dead was laid.
"Nor are older persons always so thoughtful and serious in the presence
of mortality as it might be supposed they would show themselves. Some of
us have encountered Congressional committees attending the remains of
distinguished functionaries to their distant place of burial. They
generally bore up well under their bereavement. One might have expected
to find them gathered in silent groups in the parlors of the Continental
Hotel or the Brevoort House; to meet the grief-stricken members of the
party smileless and sobbing as they sadly paced the corridors of
Parker's, before they set off in a mournful and weeping procession. It
was not so; Candor would have to confess that it was far otherwise;
Charity would suggest that Curiosity should withdraw her eye from the
key-hole; Humanity would try to excuse what she could not help
witnessing; and a tear would fall from the blind eye of oblivion and
blot out their hotel bills forever.
"You need not be surprised, then, if among this large number of young
men there should have been now and then something to find fault with.
Twice in the course of thirty-five years I have had occasion to rebuke
the acts of individual students, once in the presence of the whole
class on the human and manly sympathy of which I could always safely
rely. I have been in the habit of considering myself at liberty to visit
the department I am speaking of, though it had its own officers; I took
a part in drawing up the original regulations which governed the methods
of work; I have often found fault with individuals or small classes for
a want of method and neatness which is too common in all such places.
But in the face of all peccadilloes and of the idle and baseless stories
which have been circulated, I will say, as if from the chair I no longer
occupy, that the management of the difficult, delicate and all important
branch committed to the care of a succession of laborious and
conscientious demonstrators, as I have known it through more than the
third of a century, has been discreet, humane, faithful, and that the
record of that department is most honorable to them and to the classes
they have instructed.
"But there are better things to think of and to speak of than the false
and foolish stories to which we have been forced to listen. While the
pitiable attempt has been making to excite the feelings of the ignorant
against the school of the university, hundreds of sufferers throughout
Christendom--throughout civilization--have been blessing the name of
Boston and the Harvard Medical School as the source from which relief
has reached them for one of the gravest injuries, and for one of the
most distressing of human maladies. I witnessed many of the experiments
by which the great surgeon who lately filled a chair in Harvard
University, has made the world his debtor. Those poor remains of
mortality of which we have heard so much, have been of more service to
the human race than the souls once within them ever dreamed of
conferring. Doctor Bigelow's repeated and searching investigations into
the anatomy of the hip joint showed him the band which formed the chief
difficulty in reducing dislocations of the thigh. What Sir Astley Cooper
and all the surgeons after him had failed to see, Doctor Bigelow
detected. New rules for reduction of the dislocation were the
consequence, and the terrible pulleys disappeared from the operating
amphitheatre.
"Still more remarkable are the results obtained by Doctor Bigelow in the
saving of life and the lessening of suffering in the new method of
operation for calculus. By the testimony of those renowned surgeons, Sir
Henry Thompson and Mr. Erichsen, by the award to Doctor Bigelow of a
sexennial prize founded by the Marquis d' Argenteuil, and by general
consent, this innovation is established as one of the great modern
improvements in surgery. I saw the numerous and patient experiments by
which that priceless improvement was effected, and I cannot stop to moan
over a scrap of integument, said to have been made imperishable, when I
remember that for every lifeless body which served for these
experiments, a hundred died or a thousand living fellow creatures have
been saved from unutterable anguish, and many of them from premature
death.
"You will visit the noble hall soon to be filled with the collections
left by the late Professor John Collins Warren, added to by other
contributors, and to the care and increase of which the late Doctor John
Jackson of precious memory gave many years of his always useful and
laborious life. You may expect to find there a perfect Golgotha of
skulls and a platoon of skeletons open to the sight of all comers. You
will find portions of every human organ. You will see bones softened by
acid and tied in bowknots; other bones burned until they are light as
cork and whiter than ivory, yet still keeping their form; you will see
sets of teeth from the stage of infancy to that of old age, and in every
intermediate condition, exquisitely prepared and mounted; you will see
preparations that once formed portions of living beings now carefully
preserved to show their vessels and nerves; the organ of hearing
exquisitely carved by French artists; you will find specimens of human
integument, showing its constituent parts in different races; among the
rest, that of the Ethiopian, with its cuticle or false skin turned back
to show that God gave him a true skin beneath it as white as our own.
Some of these specimens are injected to show their blood vessels; some
are preserved in alcohol; some are dried. There was formerly a small
scrap, said to be human skin, which had been subjected to the tanning
process, and which was not the least interesting of the series. I have
not seen it for a good while, and it may have disappeared as the cases
might happen to be open while unscrupulous strangers were strolling
through the museum. If it has, the curator will probably ask the next
poor fellow who has his leg cut off, for permission to have a portion of
its integument turned into leather. He would not object, in all
probability, especially if he were promised that a wallet for his pocket
or a slipper for his remaining foot, should be made from it.
"There is no use in quarrelling with the specimens in a museum because
so many of them once formed a part of human beings. The British
Government paid fifteen thousand pounds for the collection made by John
Hunter, which is full of such relics. The Huntarian Museum is still a
source of pride to every educated citizen in London. Our foreign
visitors have already learned that the Warren Anatomical Museum is one
of the sights worth seeing during their stay among us. Charles Dickens
was greatly interested in looking through its treasures, and that
intelligent and indefatigable hard worker, the Emperor of Brazil,
inspected its wonders with as much curiosity as if he had been a
professor of anatomy. May it ever remain sacred from harm in the noble
hall of which it is about taking possession. If violence, excited by
false outcries, shall ever assail the treasure-house of anthropology, we
may tremble lest its next victim shall be the home of art, and ignorant
passions once aroused, the archives that hold the wealth of literature
perish in a new Alexandrian conflagration. This is not a novel source of
apprehension to the thoughtful. Education, religious, moral,
intellectual, is the only safeguard against so fearful a future.
"To one of the great interests of society, the education of those who
are to be the guardians of its health, the stately edifice which opens
its doors to us for the first time to-day is devoted. It is a lasting
record of the spirit and confidence of the young men of the medical
profession, who led their elders in the brave enterprise, an enduring
proof of the liberality of the citizens of Boston and of friends beyond
our narrow boundaries, a monument to the memory of those who, a hundred
years ago, added a school of medicine to our honored, cherished, revered
university, and to all who have helped to sustain its usefulness and
dignity through the century just completed.
"It stands solid and four square among the structures which are the
pride of our New England Venice--our beautiful metropolis, won by
well-directed toil from the marshes and creeks and lagoons which were
our inheritance from nature. The magnificent churches around it let in
the sunshine through windows stained with the pictured legends of
antiquity. The student of nature is content with the white rays that
show her just as she is; and if ever a building was full of light--light
from the north and the south; light from the east and the west; light
from above, which the great concave mirror of sky pours down into
it--this is such an edifice. The halls where Art teaches its lessons and
those where the sister Sciences store their collections, the galleries
that display the treasures of painting, and sculpture, are close enough
for agreeable companionship. It is probable that in due time the Public
Library, with its vast accumulations, will be next door neighbor to the
new domicile of our old and venerated institution. And over all this
region rise the tall landmarks which tell the dwellers in our streets
and the traveller as he approaches that in the home of Science, Arts,
and Letters, the God of our Fathers is never forgotten, but that high
above these shrines of earthly knowledge and beauty, are lifted the
towers and spires which are the symbols of human aspiration ever looking
up to Him, the Eternal, Immortal, Invisible."
At the conclusion of this noble address, the portrait of Professor
Oliver Wendell Holmes was presented to the Medical School by Doctor
Minot, in the happily-chosen words that follow:
"Many alumni of the school, together with some of its present students,
have desired that a permanent memorial of their beloved teacher,
Professor Oliver Wendell Holmes, should be placed in the new college
building, in token of their gratitude for the great services which he
has rendered to many generations of his pupils. By his eminent
scientific attainments, his sound method of teaching, his felicity of
illustration, and his untiring devotion to all the duties of his chair,
he inspired those who were so fortunate as to come under his instruction
with the importance of a thorough knowledge of anatomy, the foundation
of medical science. In the name of the alumni and students of this
college, I have the pleasure of presenting to the medical faculty a
portrait of Professor Holmes, painted by Mr. Alexander, to be placed in
the college in remembrance of his invaluable services to Harvard
University, to the medical profession and to the community."
The bust of Professor Bigelow was then presented to the school by Hon.
Samuel Green, in the following words:
"The pleasant duty has been assigned me, Mr. President, to present to
you, as the head of the corporation of Harvard College, in behalf of his
many friends, this animated bust of Professor Henry J. Bigelow. The list
of subscribers comprises about fifty names, and includes nearly all the
surgeons of the two great hospitals in this city; several gentlemen not
belonging to the medical profession, but warm personal friends of Doctor
Bigelow; a few ladies who had been his patients; and all the surgical
house pupils who had ever been connected with the Massachusetts General
Hospital during his long term of service at that institution, so far as
they could easily be reached by personal application. The bust is given
on the condition that it shall be placed permanently in the new surgical
lecture room, which corresponds to the scene of Doctor Bigelow's long
labors in the old building. It has been made by the eminent sculptor,
Launt Thompson of New York, and is a most faithful representation of the
distinguished surgeon. It outlines with such accuracy and precision the
features of his face and the pose of his head that nothing is wanted, in
the opinion of his friends, to make it a correct likeness.
"I need not, in the presence of this audience, name the various steps by
which Doctor Bigelow has reached the high position which is conceded to
him as freely and fully in Europe as it is in America; but I cannot
forbear an allusion to some of his original researches. His mechanism of
the reduction of a dislocated femur by manipulation was a great
discovery in surgical science, and follows as a simple corollary to the
anatomical facts which he has so clearly and minutely demonstrated. His
operation of rapid lithotrity has deprived a painful disease of much of
its terror as well as of its danger. Nor should I overlook on this
occasion his quick and ready discernment of the importance of Doctor
Morton's demonstration of the use of ether as a safe anaesthetic, which
took place at the Massachusetts General Hospital in the autumn of 1846.
The discovery of this greatest boon to the human family since the
invention of printing, was fraught with such immense possibilities that
the world was slow to realize its magnitude; but by the clear foresight
and prudent zeal of Doctor Bigelow, shown in many ways, the day was
hastened when its use became well nigh universal.
"Doctor Bigelow has filled the chair of surgery in this medical school
during thirty-three years, a period of professional instruction that
rarely falls to the lot of any teacher; and he now leaves it with the
honored title of professor emeritus. During this long term of service he
has taught, through his lectures, probably not fewer than one thousand
eight hundred students, who have graduated at the Harvard Medical
School, and perhaps seven thousand five hundred more who have taken
their degrees elsewhere; and by these thousands of physicians now
scattered throughout the land, those of them who survive, Doctor Bigelow
is remembered as most eminently a practical teacher. Active in his
profession, clear in his instruction, and enthusiastic in his
investigations, he always had the happy faculty of imparting to his
students a kindred spirit and zeal. _Haud inexpertus loquor._"
The remainder of the exercises took place in the new building. The
dedicatory prayer was offered by Rev. Doctor Peabody, who consecrated
the building "to science, humanity and charity, to Christian tenderness
and love, and to all the ministries that can enrich humanity."
President Eliot then said:
"In behalf of the President and Fellows of Harvard University, and of
the Medical School, I declare this building to be devoted to medical
science and the art of healing."
Professor Henry W. Williams, in behalf of the medical faculty, said:
"Friends of the Harvard Medical School: For a hundred years the medical
faculty of Harvard College have earnestly sought to discover, and
striven faithfully to teach, whatever might exalt the condition, relieve
the woes and prolong the service of those minds and bodies through which
man lives, and moves, and is. Year by year they have seen their horizon
of knowledge extended and their sphere of duty enlarged. But, though
zeal and self-sacrifice have not been wanting, their efforts to be
useful have been continually hindered because of imperfect facilities
and scanty resources. All is changed. In this more wonderful than
Aladdin's palace, risen from the sea,[8] and which has already endured
the wrath and mercy of the flames, we see a fulfilment of our hopes, and
the means and assurance of success. Thanks to generous benefactors,
there will no longer be a lack of room or of appliances for our needs;
our work will go on under fairer auspices, and we can offer to disciples
of the healing art fitter opportunities and ampler aid in their studies.
"As spokesman of the faculty on this occasion, so full of felicitation
and of promise, I would I could give to their message a host of tongues,
to adequately thank those whose great flood of bounty has thus favored
and endowed us. In occupying this beautiful and convenient structure, we
shall ever feel that the place is dignified by the givers' deed. And we
rejoice the more, because we know that this gift of three hundred
thousand dollars has been bestowed by those who are accustomed to use
their own eyes in their estimation of desert, and that it signifies a
hearty approval of our endeavors, and an intent that medical science, as
it is to be here embodied and taught, shall have a warm and generous
support.
"In accepting this more than princely gift as a token that the value and
necessity of well-educated physicians to every community is felt and
acknowledged, we hail the privilege of goodly fellowship in which the
donors and ourselves have become co-workers, to the end that blessings
to the whole land may arise and be memorized in this institution; and we
trust that the efforts of the faculty to advance the knowledge, train
the judgment and perfect the skill of those entering our profession will
ever continue to deserve countenance and help.
Colonel Henry Lee's address was the next to follow:
Mr. President: Thanks for your invitation to be present on this
interesting occasion--the hundredth anniversary of your medical school
and the dedication of a new building of fair proportions, well adapted
to your wants, as far as a non-professional can judge. You have assigned
to me the honorable task of speaking for the contributors to the
building fund. I little thought, as I used to gaze with awe at that
prim, solitary, impenetrable little building in Mason Street, and with
imaginative companions conjure up the mysteries within, that I should
ever dare to enter and explore its interior; nor have I yet acquired
that relish for morbid specimens which characterized my lamented
kinsman, who devoted so many years to accumulating and illustrating your
pathological collection. It is an ordeal to a layman, Mr. President,
especially to one who has reached the sixth age, to be so forcibly
reminded, as one is here, of the
last scene of all
That ends this strange, eventful history,
_Sans_ teeth, _sans_ eyes, _sans_ taste, _sans_ everything,
and it is a further ordeal to assume to speak for others, whose motives
for aiding you I may not adequately set forth. This I can say, that we
are citizens of no mean city; that private frugality and public
liberality have distinguished the inhabitants of this 'Old Town of
Boston,' from the days of the good and wise John Winthrop, whose own
substance was consumed in founding this colony, to the present time.
Down through these two centuries and a half the multiform and
ever-increasing needs of the community have been discovered and
supplied, not by Government, but by patriotic citizens, who have given
of their time and substance to promote the common weal, remembering
'that the body is not one member, but many, and that the members should
have the same care, one for another.' It is this public spirit,
manifested in its heroic form in our civil war, that has made this dear
old Commonwealth what we all know it to be, despite foul slanders. Far
distant be the day when this sense of brotherhood shall be lost. Purple
and fine linen are well, if one can afford them; but let not Dives
forget Lazarus at his gate.
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.
"Whatever doubts may arise as to some of our benevolent schemes, our
safety and progress rest upon the advancement of sound learning, and we
feel assured that the increased facilities furnished by this ample
building, for acquiring and disseminating knowledge of our fearful and
wonderful frame, will be improved by your brethren. Some of the papers
read before the International Medical College, in London, two years ago,
impressed me deeply with the many wants of the profession. And who are
more likely to have their wants supplied? for the physician is not
regarded here, as in some countries, as the successor to the barber
surgeon, and his fees slipped into his upturned palm as if he were a
mendicant or a menial. Dining with two Englishmen, one an Oxford
professor, the other the brother of a lord, a few years since, I was
surprised to hear their views of the social standing of the medical
profession, and could not help contrasting their position here, where,
if not all autocrats, they are all constitutional, and some of them
hereditary, monarchs, accompanied by honor, love, obedience, troops of
friends. But however ranked, physicians have the same attributes the
world over. I have had occasion to see a good deal of English, French,
German and Italian physicians under very trying circumstances, and have
been touched by their affectionate devotion to their patients. The good
physician is our earliest and our latest friend; he listens to our first
and our last breath; in all times of bodily distress and danger we look
up to him to relieve us. 'Neither the pestilence that walketh in
darkness, nor the sickness that destroyeth in the noonday, deters him.'
Alike to him is time, or tide,
December's snow or July's pride;
Alike to him is tide, or time,
Moonless midnight, or matin prime.
"The faithful pursuit of any profession involves sacrifice of self; but
the man who calls no hour his own, who consecrates his days and nights
to suffering humanity, treads close in the footsteps of his Master. No
wonder, then, that the bond between them and their patients is so
strong; no wonder that we respond cheerfully to their call, in gratitude
for what they have, and in sorrow for what they have not, been able to
do to preserve the lives and to promote the health of those dear to us.
And how could money be spent more economically than to promote the
further enlightenment of the medical profession? What better legacy can
we leave our children, and our children's children, than an illumined
medical faculty?"
After these addresses a reception was given to the subscribers to the
building fund by President Eliot and the faculty of the Medical School.
In referring to Doctor Holmes' brave, outspoken words, an eminent Boston
clergyman wrote as follows:
"The only qualification which we have heard of the universal and
enthusiastic appreciation of the sage, the vivacious and the rich
utterance of our admired doctor and foremost man of letters on this
occasion, was in a somewhat regretful feeling that he should have turned
the full power of his humor and of his caustic satire upon the mean and
contemptible effort of an unprincipled demagogue to defame the Harvard
Medical School. We do not sympathize with even this qualified stricture
on the remarks of Doctor Holmes here referred to. True, his address was
an historical one, designed for an historical review of the past of the
institution. But it is also to serve the uses of history for the future,
especially as a record of the aspects of the institution and of the
interest and confidence of our living community in it during the year
marking such a conspicuous event for it as the inauguration of the new
edifice prepared for it by the munificence of those who appreciate its
almost divine offices of mercy and benevolence. And during this very
year, an assault of the most dastardly character has been made upon it
by one who, high in office and with vast power of influence over an
ignorant and easily prejudiced constituency, knows as well as any one
among us the utter and wicked falsity of his allegations.
"Doctor Holmes was forced to make some recognition of these slanders
addressed to the uninformed, credulous and gullible portion of our
community. He would have been generally censured if he had passed them
by. The only question for him and for a critically judging community
would concern the true spirit and way in which he should recognize them.
We can conceive of no more fitting and effective course than that which
the sagacious doctor followed. The occasion was one in which it was for
him, in defining and greeting the steady advance made during a century
in medical and surgical science among us, to remind his hearers that
those to whom we are indebted for this advancement, have had, with their
own noble, personal devotion and effort, to triumph over and fight their
way against all the prejudices and obstructions which popular ignorance,
prejudice and superstition have engaged to annoy and withstand them. In
scarcely any one of the multiplied interests of average society have
popular weaknesses and follies more mischievously asserted themselves
than in opposition to hospitals and medical schools. When that noble
institution, the Massachusetts General Hospital, was devised, about
three quarters of a century ago, the most besotted folly and suspicion
were engaged against those who planned and fostered it. It was charged
that under the guise of benevolent service for homeless sufferers and
for the victims of accident or special maladies, it was really to be
artfully used for the trial of new medicines and risky experiments on
the poor and humble, that practitioners might have the benefit of the
knowledge thus gained in dealing with their rich patients. Let any one
visit the wards of that institution to-day, or read its annual reports,
noting the thousands of cases of its work of mercy in restoration or
relief of all classes of sufferers, and then recall the asinine abuse
visited upon its projectors. The millions of money which have been
poured into its treasury, mostly from the private benevolence of our own
citizens, is the crown of glory for that institution. An appeal of the
most artful and atrocious sort to this same popular ignorance and
passion has been made this year for purposes which we need not search
the dictionary to characterize with fitting epithets. How could Doctor
Holmes on this great occasion pass it by? How could he have treated the
offence and the offender with a more fitting combination of wit and
scorn? Most happy also was his suggestive allusion to the self mastery
by which practitioners at the dissecting table have to control, in the
interest of their high service, revulsions and shrinkings incident to
disgusting offices unknown even to chambermaids and stable boys.
"But as Doctor Holmes well said, there are more attractive and
instructive matters to engage our most grateful interest in the occasion
to which he gave such a grand interpretation. The century of medical
history which he sketched with such a naive and vigorous narrative has
its most suggestive incidents lettered on the walls on the main stairway
of the imposing edifice just opened for use. Little Holden Hall in
Cambridge; the obscure structure on Mason street; the melancholy
building on Grove street, with its tragic history, in which the donor of
its site was turned to a use by no means serviceable to science, make up
the genealogical, architectural ancestry of the new hall. The
development in the material fabric is no inadequate symbol of the
progress in every quality, accomplishment and attainment characteristic
of the advance of the profession in the last hundred years."
The name of Doctor Holmes will always be so intimately connected with
the Harvard Medical School that we give below a brief sketch of its past
history.
In the year 1780, the Boston Medical Society voted "that Doctor John
Warren be desired to demonstrate a course of anatomical lectures the
ensuing winter." The course of lectures proved so popular that the
corporation of the college asked Doctor Warren to draw up a plan for a
Medical School in connection with Harvard College. At the commencement
of the school, October 7th, 1783, there were three professors: Doctor
John Warren, who lectured on anatomy and surgery; Doctor Aaron Dexter,
who took the department of chemistry and materia medica; and Doctor
Benjamin Waterhouse, instructor in the theory and practice of medicine.
During the first year of its establishment the attendance was rather
small, consisting of members of the senior class of the college and
those students who could procure the consent of their parents. The name
of the first graduate recorded was that of John Fleet, in 1788, and he
seems to have been the only graduate of that class.
In 1806, Doctor John Collins Warren, son of Doctor John Warren, was
appointed assistant professor of anatomy and surgery. He proved a most
enthusiastic laborer in behalf of the school and to it he gave his large
anatomical collection, which was considered the most complete in the
country. In his will he bequeathed his body to the interest of science,
and provided that his skeleton be prepared and mounted, to serve the
uses of the demonstrators on anatomy. It was he, also, who took the
first steps that led to the establishment of the Medical School in
Boston. At 49 Marlborough street, he opened a room for the demonstration
of practical anatomy, and here a course of lectures was started in the
autumn of 1810 by Doctors Warren, Jackson, and Waterhouse.
In 1816, the "Massachusetts Medical College" was formally inaugurated in
a building erected on Mason street by a special grant from the
Commonwealth. At this time the faculty consisted of Doctors Jackson,
Warren, Gorham, Jacob Bigelow and Walter Channing.
In 1821 the Massachusetts General Hospital on Allan street, was
established; the two institutions have since been intimately connected
as the resources afforded students by the Hospital are here given to
members of the Medical School.
In 1836, Doctor Jackson resigned his position, and Doctor John Ware, the
assistant professor of theory and practice was appointed in the chair.
Eleven years later Doctor John Collins Warren resigned, having served
the interests of the school for forty-one years.
In 1847, through the liberality of Doctor George C. Shattuck, Sr., a
professorship of pathological anatomy was established, and Doctor John
Barnard Swett Jackson was appointed to fill the chair. It was during
this year that Doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes was chosen Parkman professor
of anatomy and physiology.
In 1849 Doctor Henry J. Bigelow was appointed to the chair of surgery
left vacant by the resignation of Doctor George Hayward, and in 1854,
Doctor Walter Channing was succeeded by Doctor David Humphreys Storer.
In 1855 Doctor Jacob Bigelow resigned, and was succeeded by Doctor
Edward Hammond Clarke.
The building on North Grove street, erected by a grant of the State upon
land donated by Doctor George Parkman, was first occupied by the school
in 1846. In this building, which was considered amply commodious at that
time, were stored the Warren Anatomical Museum, the physiological
library founded by George Woodbury Swett, the gifts to the chemical
department by Doctor John Bacon, and the collection of microscopes given
by Doctor Ellis. Since then the number of medical students has
constantly increased and the accommodations becoming inadequate, steps
were taken for the erection of the new building.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] The site occupied by the medical college was once covered by the
tides.